


you needed to hear this too

by joeri



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, can be shippy or not, vanitas deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 23:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17713655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/joeri
Summary: Vanitas’s face untenses into a lazy kind of sad. The tired kind, like he’s been in a car ride for hours never getting any closer to home.





	you needed to hear this too

**Author's Note:**

> contains spoilers for kh3

His eyes weren’t gilded in the way others were, with the heart of Xehanort buried deep inside. Each one of his were empty, glass-like with a hole poked through to let light in. It’d make sense for that mask he’s always wearing to keep the light out. Riku rarely saw much of his face and liked to think it was because Vanitas knew what would happen if anyone looked at him for too long.

Riku knew the emotion, vaguely. Not in the same context. There’s a difference between arguments over who is the real _you_ and feeling as though a fundamental part of you was attributed through someone else, and thus was not _truly yours_.

They had mildly different yet overlapping demons, so it goes.

Luckily for Riku, he’s weak, pouty and gawking off into the distance, like there’s something new out there _pissing_ him off and Riku has a bone to pick.

Because, when does Riku not.

“Hey,” he starts, making his way across the Badlands until he’s side by side with the unmasked Vanitas. He doesn’t bother to wait for a response to say, “what was all that about? Why didn’t you go with them?”

Vanitas laughs, mirthless and pitying.

“Why didn’t _you_? Finally realize that you’re not the real deal, _Replica_?”

“I did,” Riku says, unsurprised by the venom. “For now at least.”

They haven’t locked eyes. Vanitas hasn’t deigned to dignify Riku’s position beside him with more than his words as he focuses on something unattainable in the distance. Something unnamable.

“Somethin’ happen to you during that final bout to make you simmer down? You’re not nearly as easy to rile up anymore.”

Riku laughs, easy and relieving.

“You could say that; sorry to change up our dynamic like that,” he says. “I’ve been forced to face that truth more times than I can count. I think it’s time I give myself some time before figuring out what’s next.”

And Riku knows too much about himself now-- has been himself and has been Ansem, and has been in the future and in the past and has been _not_ -Riku more times than he has been _is_ -Riku. He has been a replica and he has been a phantom and he has been a blight and for once he has been enough and is okay… not being for a while.

It feels good, a little bit, to not be anything remarkable-- freeing almost.

“I’m right happy for you,” says Vanitas, churlish and effortlessly charming.

Who can’t look at those iron studded cheeks, bright eyes and dark messy hair and not be allured, Riku wonders. Having reconciled the remnant of the past that Xehanort revived for his thirteen and the replica that served Castle Oblivion into one whole, he knows a beach where Vanitas should walk. He knows a fruit they should share and knows games they should play. Riku knows a world they should both live in and maybe he doesn’t belong yet, maybe not until he can be someone new, but--

“Vanitas, you could have left.”

Vanitas is different.

“I’m different from you,” Vanitas says, and not in agreement. “You can go make friends as you like. I’m not sure I could last standing next to them without wanting to hurt them.”

“You don’t have anything better to do! What is the rest of your life, the Keyblade Graveyard? Why are you even here? To relive the past? Brood about it some more? Xehanort is gone. You don’t have to fight anymore with Ventus. You can be someone better now.”

Riku talks and Vanitas’s hands clench, and if Vanitas had tendons they would twitch and if he had his mask on he would hide his anger but instead he shuts his eyes. From his back pops a black splotch that spatters to the ground, that smokes and crawls around at his feet. The flood sharply wraps itself around Vanitas’s ankle and peers dimly up at Riku and he closes his mouth, regarding the creature guiltily.

“Funny,” snarks Vanitas humorlessly, “I was created for one thing and one thing only. My composition only allowed for me to have one purpose, and the old man not only lost but got a happy little end with his best friend.”

A second flood seeps seamlessly from his neck and leaps down to sniff about the other one. They jitter at his feet.

“I don’t have a better thing I should be doing,” he says, matter-of-factly and sure. “I failed at the one thing I was supposed to do. I don’t do anything now.”

“But, I saw what happened. Sora wanted you to be a friend! Ventus should have his other half!”

Riku stumbles backward as Vanitas twists around violently, eyes aglow and heart on fire.

“What do you want _me_ to do about it?”

There’s still some semblance of a smile in his face. Vanitas knows how to make his lips and teeth look but his eyes have blown out.

“All of my hatred and anguish came from them. They gave me all of it.”

_I don’t need their pity._

“Alone, I’m better off.”

Over the course of years, Vanitas had become so adept at controlling them, his Unverse. He could control when they came and went. He could hold them back and he could access them at will-- dredge up those hurts, those fears, those violent urges and funnel them into monsters. He’d done so good and now he grins, distantly as they fall out of his side and scamper across his birthplace.

“They won,” he says with finality. “It’s over.”

_There’s nothing more out there. There’s nothing else. There doesn’t need to be anything else. I don’t need anything else._

Any longer in this conversation and Riku is sure that Vanitas will try to hurt him. He’s a violent sort. It’s learned behavior. It’s all he knows how to do and it isn’t something Riku intends to blame him for.

_What I am is darkness._

If nothing else though, Riku still lifts his hand as if to reach out until he notices the look Vanitas offers the appendage: a mixture of disgust and fear. Riku squeezes both hands into white balls and speaks clearly.

“Vanitas, you don’t believe that.”

Vanitas’s face untenses into a lazy kind of sad. The tired kind, like he’s been in a car ride for hours never getting any closer to home.

“I know you don’t.”


End file.
